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Harness routing solution when needing to swap out clamps & retain as many references as possible

drichards
1-Newbie

Harness routing solution when needing to swap out clamps & retain as many references as possible

I worked at one company that did some avionics related work. One of the biggest single problems they had was swapping out clamps per customer design reviews at the end of projects. They had roughly 6 different family tables of clamps, and they were all modeled differently and in different orientations. Some of them had the default coordinate system at the center of where the routing of cables went through and some were facing left or others right, I think there may have been one or two that were modeled so they were extruded in the Y direction.or X direction, rather than all being in in the Z direction. To top it off there was also a glitch with some of them, they would often "flip" when you set them to fixed, I believe this was due to someone defining the coordinate system so it conformed to Catia's orientation, where I believe the Z direction is up rather than toward the user.


Anyway, due to this difficulty they didn't really do their harnessing the way it was supposed to be done. I don't know harnessing that well and don't know all the particular, but they were just routing a basic harness to represent the routing to customers.


I developed aclamp model that I believed was the most practical solution. It was difficult to develop, and utilized many of the things I had learned over the years. One model containing all of the clamps that would be used. It would definitely streamline the process of swapping out clamps, AND preserve routing references as well. I no longer work there, as far as I know it's possible they they are using them now, but at the time they weren't utilized although the head of engineering originally said we should. I think the main problem was actually that if they worked as well as I expected them to, that others would be in trouble for all of the difficulties they had with routings over the years. Most of the "concerns" voiced were pretty silly to me, one being how to tell what generic an instance was from.


So basically, I'm wondering if I was right or wrong, I can't see how they wouldn't improve the situation, and potentially totally resolve difficulties with swapping out clamps at the last minute, or even earlier in the process. I thought it was an acheivement to be able to get all of the clamp variations in one generic model.


This is a Creo 2.0 model.


I worked at one company that did some avionics related work. One of the biggest single problems they had was swapping out clamps per customer design reviews at the end of projects. They had roughly 6 different family tables of clamps, and they were all modeled differently and in different orientations. Some of them had the default coordinate system at the center of where the routing of cables went through and some were facing left or others right, I think there may have been one or two that were modeled so they were extruded in the Y direction.or X direction, rather than all being in in the Z direction. To top it off there was also a glitch with some of them, they would often "flip" when you set them to fixed, I believe this was due to someone defining the coordinate system so it conformed to Catia's orientation, where I believe the Z direction is up rather than toward the user.


Anyway, due to this difficulty they didn't really do their harnessing the way it was supposed to be done. I don't know harnessing that well and don't know all the particular, but they were just routing a basic harness to represent the routing to customers.


I developed aclamp model that I believed was the most practical solution. It was difficult to develop, and utilized many of the things I had learned over the years. One model containing all of the clamps that would be used. It would definitely streamline the process of swapping out clamps, AND preserve routing references as well. I no longer work there, as far as I know it's possible they they are using them now, but at the time they weren't utilized although the head of engineering originally said we should. I think the main problem was actually that if they worked as well as I expected them to, that others would be in trouble for all of the difficulties they had with routings over the years. Most of the "concerns" voiced were pretty silly to me, one being how to tell what generic an instance was from. The significant benefit over using interchange assemblies is that a lot more references can be preserved with proper use, such as detail attachments in drawings, and preserving exploded views and simplified reps.


So basically, I'm wondering if I was right or wrong, I can't see how they wouldn't improve the situation, and potentially totally resolve difficulties with swapping out clamps at the last minute, or even earlier in the process. I thought it was an acheivement to be able to get all of the clamp variations in one generic model. I think most user would assume this is impossible to do.


This is a Creo 2.0 model.


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2 REPLIES 2
jstone
4-Participant
(To:drichards)

Dan,


It looks like what you did was to place the three in-line datum points for the harnessing people to route their wiring or network through. I understand what you are trying to do and my reply would be to use what the harnessing people route along. This could also be a curve or an axis. I believe the axis has direction. I would not use a csys since it has an incoming direction along the z axis. Myself, I like to run along curves as it keeps the wiring straight. I quess I believe that datum points allow the wiring to be a little loose (acts more like a spline) at the ends.


Thanks,


jef

In case you downloaded the part file, I updated it with a later one I located. With another similar model one of the routing guys asked for about 5 points in sort of a circular shape, with one at the center, that stuff isn't in this earlier model.


Actually, I wanted to provide for most or all routing options people might want, but the real thing was the interchangability of using family table instances. What they were doing was kind of shoddy due mainly to problems related to clamp changes as the design changed and then near the end when customers would want to use a different clamp. They would lose everything, and everything would have to be redone, so they drastically reduced what was done, thus reducing what would have to be redone. These clamp changes were a really huge problem for them.


The intent was to be able to route wires, harnesses and cables, and be able to swap out clamps with the least possible amount of re-work. Not only in the actual changing of the clamp models themselves, but also all of the references involved, from routing references to drawing views.

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